Wildest Dreams (Thunder Point #9)(56)

She had tried to protect him from everything. She hadn’t been able to so far.

“Have you ever been to a luau, Lin Su?”

She had. And she’d been younger than Charlie.

When Lin Su was a girl she’d been on some mighty nice trips. Her parents were well-to-do and they spent a couple of weeks in Saint Thomas every winter; Boston was brutal in the winter. They had a place at the cape for summers. She’d been to Maui with the family twice—Karyn’s second wedding was held there. They also traveled to Europe a few times. Lin Su also went to Europe with her high school class—Italy, France, Spain. She’d had good experiences even if she hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed the company of her parents. Well, they didn’t happen to be especially enjoyable people. Gordon was only interested in golfing, drinking, living it up with his cronies. Marilyn, focused on status, was more interested in the wives of those cronies.

Lin Su had fun—all the cronies and wives had kids and she went to school with many of them. Then along came Jake in her senior year and those little family trips improved tremendously. Her parents were more than thrilled to invite him along—both to keep her out of their hair and to impress his parents.

Charlie, however, had never been anywhere except the emergency room from time to time. And while they always seemed to be moving, scraping to hold things together, worrying about where they’d land next, he had never complained. Why shouldn’t he be lucky for once? Fly to the islands, watch his idol race?

But it wasn’t just Charlie she hoped to protect. Lin Su grew to like Blake more every day. There wasn’t an admirable quality he lacked and she didn’t want to long for him, to long for a life she would never have. She pretended she didn’t want Charlie to be let down when Blake turned out to be human. She feared being vulnerable to his touch, his kindness, his devotion to her son; she feared the dark pain of rejection. Ordinarily such fears would be easy for her to mask but Lin Su had strong memories of frolicking on the beach with her teenage lover, Charlie’s father, Jake. What more poignant way was there than that vivid memory to remind her that her life would be forever ruined if she let herself be drawn into that sort of romantic idealism again? Charlie was just a kid. She had been just a kid.

After Winnie was settled, Lin Su walked with Charlie along the beach road to the loft. “Soon it will be too cold for this walk,” she said.

“I want to go,” Charlie said. “I want to see him race. I want to take a trip. On a plane.”

“You’ve been on a plane,” she said.

“Not recently enough for me to remember,” he reminded her. “You can forbid it, I know. You can refuse and even force Winnie to get a nurse who goes along with what she wants, but that would be so stupid because Winnie makes your life easier than anyone ever has.”

“That’s not why I took the job,” Lin Su said. “The pay is good. She provides benefits we need!”

“I want to go,” he said again. “It’s safe, it’s convenient, it’s not expensive, and if you find a way to say no to something so totally cool, it will come between us. In a bad way.”

Lin Su stopped walking. “Are you threatening me?”

“I’m going to go places and do things, Mom. I might not be a great athlete but I’m going to do athletic things. I’m going to run and swim and study and travel. I know it’s going to be hard but I can work at it and it will happen. Because I want it.”

“The sisters I grew up with had everything handed to them and they were incorrigible,” she said.

“I don’t know very much about them.”

“Better that way,” she said, walking again. “You can trust me to tell the truth.”

“At least part of it,” Charlie said. “Just the part that keeps me in line. Why don’t you trust me with all of it? I’m not a bad person. I do everything you want.”

She stopped again. “Charlie, how can I show you life is not easy? That you have to be strong?”

“You think I didn’t figure that out already? You should ask Blake sometime about how he learned to run, learned to swim. He makes our life look like we’re trust-fund babies.” He walked a little more. “I want us to go, to see something we don’t see every day, to watch him race. Mom, I want us to go.”

“Lucky for you, Winnie is stubborn and she won’t stop until she gets her way and we need the job,” she said.

“Why are you afraid to go?” Charlie asked.

“I’m not afraid,” she said. Then she sighed. “It’s a thing I have. About my comfort zone. Where I feel most at ease. And secure.”

“Where you feel most in control,” he argued. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. Winnie and Mikhail have traveled the world. Over and over. Even unfriendly places. This is only Hawaii, just another state, just like driving to California. Except it takes a little longer.”

“Over six hours. Over ocean,” she said.

“It’s beautiful there, Mom. And my friend Blake is going to kick ass.”

“Language,” she said. “Language.”

“Prude,” he said, laughing.

* * *

Grace asked Lin Su if she’d mind the flower shop for a couple of hours right after lunch so she could read with her mother and run a couple of errands. Lin Su was more than happy to—there were many things she loved about the flower shop. It was quiet most of the time, there wasn’t much demand on her besides taking calls and, if she was completely bored, she did a little tidying up. And being around fresh flowers was soothing.